inequality

At this very moment, as you read this, you are waiting on something. We all are waiting on something, always. As anthropologist Ghassan Hage wrote, we wait for “an ice cream and for final judgment.” The coronavirus pandemic has illuminated waiting. We waited to hear guidelines from government and health officials. We waited for our stimulus checks. And, now, we wait for our turn to get a vaccination.

A difficult part of waiting is that we often do not know how long we will wait. For example, how long will we wait for a coronavirus vaccine? Research has found the importance of temporal specificity, meaning the presence or absence of a deadline as an assurance of action. A specific timeframe, telling a person when the waiting will end, gives “some degree of control over the situation, through knowledge” (Rotter, 2016).

• Jason Farman, 2018. Delayed Response: The art of waiting from the ancient to the instant world. Yale University Press.
• Ghassan Hage, 2009. Waiting. Melbourne University Press.
• Rebecca Rotter, 2016. Waiting in the asylum determination process: Just an empty interlude?Time & Society, 25(1): 80-101.
• Harold Schweizer, 2008. On Waiting. University of Toronto Quarterly, 74(3): 777-792.

Time is an irreplaceable and finite resource. Waiting can feel like a waste of time. Researchers have observed that, thanks to technology, waiting can be “more than empty time” (Sebald, 2020). Digital media and “speed of connectivity is the antipode to waiting” (Wexler, 2015). Digital connection makes waiting more tolerable.

• Ruth Ayaß, 2014. Using media as involvement shields. Journal of Pragmatics, 72: 5–17.
• Giovanni Gasparini, 1995. On Waiting. Time & Society, 4(1): 29-45.
• Gerd Sebald, 2020. “Loading, please wait:” Temporality and (bodily) presence in mobile digital communication. Time & Society. Online first.
• Mark Wexler, 2015. Re-thinking queue culture: the commodification of thick time. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 35(3/4): 165-181. 

While waiting is universal, the experience of waiting is not the same for everyone–and, in fact, waiting is rife with inequalities. Sociologist Barry Schwartz perhaps has done the most to illustrate these inequalities, writing “the distribution of waiting time coincides with the distribution of power” (1974). Pierre Bourdieu (2000) writes that “making people wait” – or “delaying without destroying hope” and “adjourning without totally disappointing” – are primary elements of domination. Ultimately, those who have the power to make others wait demonstrate that their time is more valuable than someone else’s time.

When we talk about work, we often miss a type of work that is crucial to keeping the economy going and arguably more challenging and difficult than ever under conditions of quarantine and social distancing: care work. Care work includes both paid and unpaid services caring for children, the elderly, and those who are sick and disabled, including bathing, cooking, getting groceries, and cleaning.

Sociologists have found that caregiving that happens within families is not always viewed as work, yet it is a critical part of keeping the paid work sector running. Children need to eat and be bathed and clothed. Families need groceries. Houses need to be cleaned. As many schools in the United States are closed and employees are working from home, parents are having to navigate extended caring duties. Globally, women do most of this caring labor, even when they also work outside of the home. 

• Paula England. 2005. “Emerging Theories of Care Work.” Annual Review of Sociology 31: 381–399.
• Suzanne Bianchi, Nancy Folbre, and Douglas Wolf. 2012. “Unpaid Care Work.” In N. Folbre (Ed.) For Love and Money: Care Provision in the United States (pp. 40–64). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
• Shahra Razavi and Silke Staab. 2010. “Underpaid and Overworked: A Cross-national Perspective on Care Workers.” International Labour Review 149: 407–422.

Globally, women do most of this caring labor, even when they also work outside of the home. Historically, wealthy white women were able to escape these caring duties by employing women of color to care for their children and households, from enslaved African Americans to domestic servants. Today people of color, immigrants, and those with little education are overrepresented in care work with the worst job conditions. 

• Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung. 1989. The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home. Penguin Random House.
• Evelynn Nakano Glenn. 2010. Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America. Harvard University Press.
• Mignon Duffy, Amy Armenia, and Clare L. Stacey. 2015. Caring on the Clock: The Complexities and Contradictions of Paid Care Work. Families in Focus. Rutgers University Press.
• Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. 2001. Doméstica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence. University of California Press.

In the past decade, the care work sector has grown substantially in the United States. However, care workers are still paid low wages and receive little to no benefits. In fact, care work wages are stagnant or declining, despite an overall rise in education levels for workers. Thus, many care workers — women especially — find themselves living in poverty.  

• Rachel E. Dwyer. 2013. “The Care Economy? Gender, Economic Restructuring, and Job Polarization in the U.S Labor Market.” American Sociological Review 78: 390–416.
• Jennifer Craft Morgan and Brandy Farrar. 2015. “Building Meaningful Career Lattices: Direct Care Workers in Long-term Care.” In M. Duffy, A. Armenia and C. L. Stacey (Eds.), Caring on the Clock: The Complexities and Contradictions of Paid Care Work. Families in Focus (pp. 278–286). Rutgers University Press.

Caring is important for a society to function, yet care work — paid or unpaid — is still undervalued. In this time of COVID-19 where people are renegotiating how to live and work, attention to caring and appreciation for care work is more necessary than ever.

2020 is a census year in the United States, meaning that this year represents the major moment of a constitutionally-mandated survey about the American population.

Since it was first introduced in the 18th century, the U.S. Census has always provided important data for guiding public policy and served as a crucial source of evidence for social science research. Considering we only get this chance once a decade, here at The Society Pages we took a quick census of our own content to bring you our favorites #TSPClassics about the Census. This collection covers a variety of topics, ranging from the nuts and bolts of conducting the Census itself, to how the history of the Census reflects and impacts changing racial and ethnic boundaries in the United States, and the variety of ways social scientists have used census data in conducting research and building theory. Read on!

The Census and Social Science: Lessons for and from Conducting Research

Advances in social science methodology and research have contributed to developments in the Census. Though it is a rare and large research endeavor unlike any other, the Census is a great example of theoretical and methodological considerations that social scientists grapple with every day. Not only does the Census give us a chance to put sociological theory and methodology into action, but Census data has been important in social science literature and research across a variety of fields.

As one of the largest endeavors in data collection, the Census has many complicated issues to consider as part of the practical processes involved with research and the interpretation of data.

• In this #TSPClassic episode of Office Hours, we hear from Robert M Groves, a sociologist who was then Director of the Census Bureau, about how the Census manages and works through such complications.
• In this Clipping, Robin Autry speaks with The Atlantic about how researchers clean census data to deal with ambiguous, fluid concepts such as race and ethnicity.
• Then, read this #TSPClassic from The Color Line about the preparation and planning behind the 2010 Census; how does such thinking relate to the 2020 Census?

Census data and related research can tell us a lot about our lives, particularly when it comes to where we live and how we work.

• Scholars have used such data to understand the history of urbanization and suburbanization in the United States; this Sociological Images post draws on census data to visualize the development of the modern American metropolis and contemporary communities.
• Read this Sociological Images post about inequalities in Americans’ commutes to work and access to transportation.
• Finally, see how Graphic Sociology uses on census data to discuss how unemployment and poverty relates to age, gender, and much more. 

The Census can tell us a lot about the big picture, but what can it tell you about yourself?

• In this article from Contexts, Leah Sabo reflects on how thinking about the Census can teach us about the individual and make us think about our own lives. Read on to spark your sociological imagination about privilege, neighborhoods, diversity, and much more.

The Census, and subsidiary projects it manages such as the American Community Survey (ACS), provide incredibly important data for social science research. Though the ACS reaches fewer people than the one-a-decade Census, it gathers information about ancestry, neighborhoods, and communities in more detail and with more regularity.

• In this #TSPClassic from Council on Contemporary Families, Philip Cohen challenges proposed budget cuts to the ACS and explains why it is important to fund this survey and social science in general.
• Furthermore, such research processes are important around the world; read a Sociological Images piece about what other censuses around the world look like, based on resources from the American Anthropological Association.

The Census and Race: The Social Construction of Race and Diversity in the USA

“Race” is a social construction. Social forces shape how physical characteristics and groups become seen in racialized ways, and this happens through a variety of cultural and material processes. The ways the Census approaches race, ethnicity, and identity have changed drastically over its centuries-long history; much of this reflects shifting norms about racial categories and racism itself in the United States. Census data thus shows us how race and racial landscapes change, and the complexities of race in the United States.

Racial identification on the Census has changed and evolved.

• This Sociological Images post describes how the Census’ racial categories have changed over the years
• This Sociological Images post describes shifts in Census practices regarding the measurement of race through appearance versus identity. 
• Be sure to read this summary of research on how the fluidity of racial identification on the Census can itself be a fluid process.
• These next two Clippings consider how the Census relates to the intersections of race, ethnicity, nationality, and citizenship: the first describes how the Census affects the historical development of “Hispanic” as an ethnic category, and the second points to complexities in measuring American-Indian identities in census data. 

Census research has been used to study racial inequality both past and present.

• This post from Sociological Images uses census data to illustrate discuss historical quantification of slavery.
• And this #TSPClassic via Council on Contemporary Families draws on census data to discuss how, despite the passage of fifty years since the Civil Rights Act, racial inequality and disadvantage persist in a variety of outcomes.
• Finally, read this Sociological Images post to learn more about racial residential segregation in several American metropolises.

The twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of unprecedented racial and ethnic diversity in the United States.

• This post from Council on Contemporary Families uses census data to capture how America’s children are growing up in a new era of everyday diversity
• And this #TSPClassic from Sociological Images shows racial and ethnic diversity within American families.
• This Sociological Images post considers potential contrasts between the demographics of the mid-20th and the mid-21st century.
• Along these lines, read this post from Color Lines about the rise of interracial marriage and families, particularly for Asian-Americans. 

The rise of difference and diversity has drawn discomfort, racial tensions, and backlash, and much of this comes from the ways that everyday people react to census data and population projects.

• This Clipping describes such reactions
• And this Clipping describes how census data can be used to stoke fears about immigration.
• Finally, be sure to read this #TSPClassic, a special feature about the “whitelash” against diversity.

As American diversity continues to rise, push back and resentment will surely continue to be relevant to how people use and react to census data. What will we see once the 2020 numbers come out?

Finally, it is important to recognize that rising racial diversity does not necessarily mean that racial inequality will disappear; in fact, sociologists often find the opposite. One such area of research is related to segregation and concentrated disadvantage, wherein non-white communities often have less cultural, political, and economic power.

• Be sure to read this Discoveries post about historical and contemporary racial segregation between the North and the South,
• And read this Clippings piece about how segregation persists despite an increasingly racially diverse population. 

As we move into a future of greater difference, such ideas are important to keep in mind; what will the 2020 Census tell us about race, diversity, and inequality?

We hope you enjoy these #TSPClassics as much as we do, and we look forward to working with the 2020 Census data!

During times of crisis, existing prejudices often become heightened. Fears about the current coronavirus, or COVID-19, have revealed rampant racism and xenophobia against Asians. Anti-Asian discrimination ranges from avoiding Chinese businesses to direct bullying and assaults of people perceived to be Asian. This discriminatory behavior is nothing new. The United States has a long history of blaming marginalized groups when it comes to infectious disease, from Irish immigrants blamed for carrying typhus to “promiscuous women” for spreading sexually transmitted infections. 

Historically, the Chinese faced blame time and again. In the 19th century, public health officials depicted Chinese immigrants as “filthy,” carriers of disease. These views influenced Anti-Chinese policies and practices, including humiliating medical examinations at Angel Island — the entry port for many Chinese immigrants coming to America — and the violent quarantine and disinfection of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the early 20th century when a case of the Bubonic plague was confirmed there. 

• Nayan Shah. 2010. Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown. University of California Press.
• Erika Lee and Judy Yung. 2010. Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. Oxford University Press.
• Alan Kraut. 1994. Silent Travelers: Germs, Disease, and the Immigrant Menace. Basic Books.
• Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern. 2002. “The Foreignness of Germs: The Persistent Association of Immigrants and Disease in American Society.” The Milbank Quarterly 80(4): 757-788.

Discrimination against the Chinese is one example among many. Such discrimination had nothing to do with their actual hygiene and health, and everything to do with their social position relative to other racial groups. It’s easy to look back on the xenophobic U.S. policies and behavior in earlier times. Let’s not fall into the same patterns today.

For more on xenophobia and coronavirus, listen to Erika Lee on a recent episode of NPR’s podcast, Code Switch.

Textbooks are more prevalent in American history courses than in any other subject, and a recent article from The New York Times revealed how geography has influenced what U.S. students learn. Despite having the same publisher, textbooks in California and Texas (the two largest markets for textbooks in the U.S.) vary wildly in educational content. Researchers have also found numerous inconsistencies and inaccuracies in American history textbooks, resulting in the glorification of national figures and spread of national myths.

Depictions of violence in textbooks are also highly politicized. Episodes of violence are often muted or emphasized, based on a country’s role in the conflict. For example, conflicts with foreign groups or countries are more likely than internal conflicts to appear in textbooks. Additionally, American textbooks consistently fail to acknowledge non-American casualties in their depictions of war, citing American soldiers as victims, rather than perpetrators of the horrors of war. Depictions of conflicts also vary over time, and as time passes, textbooks move away from nationalistic narratives to focus instead on individualistic narratives.

• Elizabeth Cole, ed. 2007. Teaching the violent past: History education and reconciliation. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. 
• Sylvie Guichard. 2013. “The Indian nation and selective amnesia: representing conflicts and violence in Indian history textbooks.” Nations and Nationalism, 19(1), 68-86.
• Lachmann, Richard and Lacy Mitchell. 2014. “The Changing Face of War in Textbooks: Depictions of World War II and Vietnam, 1970-2009.” Sociology of Education 87(3): 188-203.
• Joachim Savelsberg and Ryan D. King. 2011. American Memories: Atrocities and the Law. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Public figures, like Hellen Keller and Abraham Lincoln, tend to be “heroified” in American textbooks. Rather than treating these public figures as flawed individuals who have accomplished great things, American textbooks whitewash their personal histories. For example, textbooks overlook Keller’s fight for socialism and support of the USSR and Lincoln’s racist beliefs. The heroification of these figures is meant to inspire the myth of the American Dream — that if you work hard, you can achieve anything, despite humble beginnings.

• Barry Schwartz and Howard Schuman. 2005. “History, Commemoration, and Belief: Abraham Lincoln in American Memory, 1945-2001.” American Sociological Review 70(2): 183-203.
• James W. Loewen. 1995 [2007]. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Touchstone.

Symbolic representation of the past is important in stratified societies because it affects how individuals think about their society. Emphasizing the achievements of individuals with humble beginnings promotes the belief among American students that if they work hard they can achieve their goals, despite overwhelming structural inequalities. Furthermore, as historical knowledge is passed down from one generation to the next, this knowledge becomes institutionalized and reified–making it more difficult to challenge or question.

• Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books.
• Karl Mannheim. 1936. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. San Diego: Harcourt. 
• William L Griffen and John Marciano. 1979. Teaching the Vietnam War. Montclair, NJ: Allanheld.

This post was created in collaboration with the Minnesota Journalism Center. 

Objectivity and neutrality have been cornerstone norms of journalistic practice in democracies in the Western world for over a century. However, in recent years ideals of fairness, accuracy, and balance have come under increasing attack from many different and sometimes unexpected directions. 

Many beliefs about the need for media objectivity go back to Alexis de Tocqueville’s 19th century argument that the circulation of newspapers are integral to fostering a functional and effective democracy. Indeed, objectivity became a news value in the 1830s, partly to do with the rise of the Associated Press (AP), created in 1848 by a group of New York newspapers that wanted to take advantage of the speed of the telegraph in transmitting news to multiple outlets. To transmit news to a variety of news outlets with a variety of political allegiances consistently, a sense of objectivity had to be maintained to be relevant to as wide an audience and clientele as possible. 

• Michael Schudson. 1981. Discovering The News: A Social History Of American Newspapers. New York, NY: Basic Books.

• Gaye Tuchman. 1972. Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen’s Notions of Objectivity. American Journal of Sociology 77(4): 660–679.

Cutting against these norms was the sensationalism of newspaper content in the late 19th century. While the use of emotion in reporting has often been connected to the commercialization and tabloidization of journalism, in recent years it has also appeared in coverage of disasters, crises, and human rights abuses — and has come to be seen as positive and valuable as well. The roles of objectivity and impartiality have always been contested within journalistic practice, so rather than seeing emotion as the opposite of objectivity, some scholars now argue it can come alongside and inform journalistic practice worldwide.

• Karin Wahl-Jorgensen. 2019. Emotions, Media and Politics. Medford, MA, USA: Polity.
• Matt Carlson. 2017. Journalistic Authority: Legitimating News in the Digital Era. Columbia University Press.
• Valerie Bélair‐Gagnon. 2013. Revisiting Impartiality: Social Media and Journalism at The BBC. Symbolic Interaction 36(4): 478–492.

The role of objectivity has also come into question as a mechanism that can silence marginalized writers and populations. Relatedly, news can also reinforce institutions of power in society, for better or for worse. In populist countries including Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, “professional journalism” is often pitted against “militant journalism” promoted by neo-populist governments and their sympathizers — a movement that has critical implications for the freedom of the press in societies in the Global South. Also, news media has been found to negatively portray protests and protesters.

• Danielle Kilgo and Summer Harlow. 2019. “Protests, Media Coverage, and a Hierarchy of Social Struggle.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 24(4): 508–530. 
• Lewis Raven Wallace. 2019. The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity. University of Chicago Press.

• Silvio Waisbord. 2013. Reinventing Professionalism: Journalism and News in Global Perspective. Cambridge: Polity.

Originally published July 30, 2019.

As candidates gear up for this week’s democratic debates, constituents continue to voice concerns about the student debt crisis. Recent estimates indicate that roughly 45 million students in the United States have incurred student loans during college. Democratic candidates like Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have proposed legislation to relieve or cancel  this debt burden. Sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom’s congressional testimony on behalf of Warren’s student loan relief plan last April reveals the importance of sociological perspectives on the debt crisis. Sociologists have recently documented the conditions driving student loan debt and its impacts across race and gender. 

In recent decades, students have enrolled in universities at increasing rates due to the “education gospel,” where college credentials are touted as public goods and career necessities, encouraging students to seek credit. At the same time, student loan debt has rapidly increased, urging students to ask whether the risks of loan debt during early adulthood outweigh the reward of a college degree. Student loan risks include economic hardship, mental health problems, and delayed adult transitions such as starting a family. Individual debt has also led to disparate impacts among students of color, who are more likely to hail from low-income families. Recent evidence suggests that Black students are more likely to drop out of college due to debt and return home after incurring more debt than their white peers. Racial disparities in student loan debt continue into their mid-thirties and impact the white-Black racial wealth gap.

• Jason N. Houle and Fenaba R. Addo. 2018. “Racial Disparities in Student Debt and the Reproduction of the Fragile Black Middle Class.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.
• Jason N. Houle and Cody Warner. 2017. “Into the Red and Back to the Nest? Student Debt, College Completion, and Returning to the Parental Home among Young Adults.” Sociology of Education 90(1): 89-108.
• Brandon A. Jackson and John R. Reynolds. 2013. “The Price of Opportunity: Race, Student Loan Debt, and College Achievement.” Sociological Inquiry 83(3): 335-368.

Other work reveals gendered disparities in student debt. One survey found that while women were more likely to incur debt than their male peers, men with higher levels of student debt were more likely to drop out of college than women with similar amounts of debt. The authors suggest that women’s labor market opportunities — often more likely to require college degrees than men’s — may account for these differences. McMillan Cottom’s interviews with 109 students from for-profit colleges uncovers how Black, low-income women in particular bear the burden of student loans. For many of these women, the rewards of college credentials outweigh the risks of high student loan debt.

• Rachel E. Dwyer, Randy Hodson, and Laura McCloud. 2013. “Gender, Debt, and Dropping Out of College.” Gender & Society 27(1): 30-55.
• Tressie McMillan Cottom. 2017. Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy. New York: The New Press.

As Black History month draws to a close, it’s important to celebrate the work of Black scholars that contributed to social science research. Although the discipline has begun to recognize the foundational work of scholars like W.E.B. DuBois, academia largely excluded Black women from public intellectual space until the mid-20th century. Yet, as Patricia Hill Collins reminds us, they leave contemporary sociologists with a a long and rich intellectual legacy. This week we celebrate the (often forgotten) Black women who continue to inspire sociological studies regarding Black feminist thought, critical race theory, and methodology.

Ida B. Wells (1862-1931) was a pioneering social analyst and activist who wrote and protested against many forms of racism and sexism during the late 19th and early 20th century. She protested Jim Crow segregation laws, founded a Black women’s suffrage movement, and became one of the founding members of the NAACP. But Wells is best-known for her work on lynchings and her international anti-lynching campaign. While Wells is most commonly envisioned as a journalist by trade, much of her work has inspired sociological research. This is especially true for her most famous works on lynchings, Southern Horrors (1892) and The Red Record (1895).

In Southern Horrors (1892), Wells challenged the common justification for lynchings of Black men for rape and other crimes involving white women. She adamantly criticized white newspaper coverage of lynchings that induced fear-mongering around interracial sex and framed Black men as criminals deserving of this form of mob violence. Using reports and media coverage of lynchings – including a lynching of three of her close friends – she demonstrated that lynchings were not responses to crime, but rather tools of political and economic control by white elites to maintain their dominance. In The Red Record (1895), she used lynching statistics from the Chicago Tribune to debunk rape myths, and demonstrated how the pillars of democratic society, such as right to a fair trial and equality before the law, did not extend to African American men and women.

• Paula Giddings. 2008. Ida: A Sword among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign against Lynching. Amistad.
• Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge. 2006. The Women Founders: Sociology and Social Theory 1830–1930, A Text/Reader. Waveland Press.

Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) was an avid educator and public speaker. In 1982, her first book was published, A Voice from the South: By A Black Woman of the South. It was one of the first texts to highlight the race- and gender-specific conditions Black women encountered in the aftermath of Reconstruction. Cooper argued that Black women’s and girls’ educational attainment was vital for the overall progress of Black Americans. In doing so, she challenged notions that Black Americans’ plight was synonymous with Black men’s struggle. While Cooper’s work has been criticized for its emphasis on racial uplift and respectability politics, several Black feminists credit her work as crucial for understanding intersectionality, a fundamentally important idea in sociological scholarship today.

• Vivian M. May. 2012. Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist. Routledge.

As one of the first Black editors for an American Sociological Association journal, Jacquelyn Mary Johnson Jackson (1932-2004) made significant advances in medical sociology. Her work focused on the process of aging in Black communities. Jackson dismantled assumptions that aging occurs in a vacuum. Instead, her scholarship linked Black aging to broader social conditions of inequality such as housing and transportation. But beyond scholarly research, Jackson sought to develop socially relevant research that could reach the populations of interest. As such, she identified as both a scholar and activist and sought to use her work as a tool for liberation.

• Delores P. Aldridge. 2008. Imagine a World: Pioneering Black Women Sociologists. University Press of America.

Together, these Black women scholars challenged leading assumptions regarding biological and cultural inferiority, Black criminality, and patriarchy from both white and Black men. Their work and commitment to scholarship demonstrates how sociology may be used as a tool for social justice. Recent developments such as the #CiteBlackWomen campaign draw long-overdue attention to their work, encouraging the scholarly community to cite Wells, Cooper, Jackson, and other Black women scholars in our research and syllabi.

Originally posted July 8, 2019.

On July 4^th, 1776, signers of the Declaration of Independence declared their intent to “dissolve the political bands” holding the United States and Great Britain together. That subtle language quells the imagery of violent revolution — over nearly a decade of warfare, thousands died in the conflict. Today, in the midst of flags and cookouts, the violence of the revolution may yet again fade to the background. But many social scientists examine such violence deeply, and in doing so showcase the power of violence to remake identity, redraw state boundaries, and bring power to marginalized groups.

Acts of violence can redefine the boundaries of groups. During crises like civil war or political upheaval, political elites may seek to unite ethnic, racial, or religious groups to consolidate power. Threats of violence may motivate these groups, for fear or for self-protection, to mobilize. Historically, these changing groups have influenced national boundaries — indigenous groups were often targeted for violent elimination in order to conquer a space for a particular identity group, or areas were conquered to make more space for a group in power. In these ways, many of the symbolic and physical boundaries in the world around us carry traces of violence.

• Georg Simmel. 1955. Conflict. Toronto: The Free Press.
• Michael Mann. 2004. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Eric Weitz. 2003. A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation. Princeton University Press. 

Violence and conflict can also create opportunities for those with limited political power. Elisabeth Jean Wood, for example, analyzed how insurgent groups of impoverished and exploited workers could use organizing and sometimes violent tactics to convince powerful leaders to negotiate, thus installing democratic governments. Marie Berry examines political power in the aftermath of conflict, showing how the participation of women in traditionally male spaces after violence enabled political organizing and gains in power. Though the extent and longevity of these changes differ between conflicts, violence and its aftermath have the capacity to result in political change.

• Marie E. Berry. 2018. War, Women, and Power: From Violence to Mobilization in Rwanda and 
• Bosnia- Herzegovina. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Elisabeth Jean Wood. 2000. Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 

While the transformative power of violence looks different across cases, its power doesn’t exist in a vacuum — global norms and regulations around violence often impact its destructive and constructive capacities. Today’s belligerents are often aware of laws surrounding the use of violence, like regulations about who or what can be targeted and what types of strategies are permitted. To garner favor with powerful international actors, many combatants abide by these regulations. Others abide selectively, like signing onto treaties in order to partake in other forms of violence with less oversight.

• Jessica A. Stanton. 2016. Violence and Restraint in Civil War: Civilian Targeting in the Shadow of International Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Emilie Hafner-Burton, Kiyoteru Tsutsui, and John W. Meyer. 2008. “International Human Rights Law and the Politics of Legitimation.” International Sociology 23(1): 115-41.
• John W. Meyer. 2000. “Globalization: Sources and Effects on National States and Societies.” International Sociology 15(2): 233-248.

In the centuries that have passed since the revolution, many Americans now think of July 4^thas a day of parades and parties, as representations of conflict have faded over time. But amongst the fireworks, social science shows the centrality of violence in national histories, international relations, and the relative power of social groups.